Teaching college is no longer a middle-class job, and everyone should care - <AUTHOR> http://www.guernicamag.com/features/the-teaching-class/ <comment><USER2> It is stunning that a public school teacher apparently makes almost 2x what a college teacher makes, at least in California. Mind you, I am not arguing that school teachers should make less, collage profs should make more. This is amazing though, were is the money going.

Anecdotally, I think a lot of the money is spent on outside services through a corrupt bidding process. Back in 2008 I used to run a document scanning company. We did large contracts for the state of California and the Four Seasons Hotel chain. We had glowing recommendations from all of our customers, including a lot of large businesses in San Diego. So, foolishly, we thought we could toss our hat into the ring when UCSD started looking for a company to do their document management. Our bid was (based on what we could find out) roughly 1/2 of the winning bid. We had all the required bonds, same quality, faster turnaround time, and we offered more services. We didn't get the job. So UCSD paid twice as much for the same document scanning service, meanwhile some poor adjunkt professor is eating cat food! Great!

<comment><USER3> Yes. I worked for a university briefly as a staff member. Our university sung far and wide about how it just raised $400 million for its endowment in its most recent fundraising campaign, and yet, it couldn't afford to pay me more than a $25,000 salary in the IT department. How on earth is this possible? It's probably in all the unseen costs they pay out in contracts to subcontractors. But another clue might be this: during the time of my employment, there were several ongoing, large construction projects.

Universities are obsessed with the rankings of US News. And for some reason, they feel that campus renewal and renovation construction projects are the secret to mastering them. So instead of paying a decent wage to the people who actually comprise the "college experience" for their students, they pay outsized amounts to further improve their already glittering campus so that it looks better on the 15 minute admissions tour that prospective students take.

Somewhere the priorities are out of whack. I think if universities stopped spending so much money gaming the rankings, they might realize that paying their staff more and paying their faculty more would translate into a better, more involved college experience for their students. And that, in turn, would make their students evangelize to other prospective students about how much they love their college...

Improve the product, not the marketing.

<comment><USER4> Once upon a time, administration was 20% of college budgets. It's now 50% (guess who does budgeting?). You need look no further than that to find your answer.

<comment><USER5> They also have to spend a lot of money on computer labs, stadiums and gyms and such to boost the reputation and attractiveness of the school. It's much easier to judge how beautiful and modern a school is during a quick visit than it is to judge teaching quality.

Furthermore, 18-year-olds with guaranteed loans don't look at the price tags for those gimmicks rationally. When you're a kid with $300 in the bank the difference between a $50,000 loan and a $80,000 loan is so abstract it might as well not exist.

Combine those two factors and you get runaway spending and debt with little emphasis on teaching quality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Slightly ironic, but Guernica Magazine has a "jobs" page on their site: [http://www.guernicamag.com/jobs/](http://www.guernicamag.com/jobs/)

If you click through, you'll find that all of their positions are unpaid. It seems that magazine editor is no longer a middle-class job, either. You have to be rich enough to be able to work for free.

</comment><comment><USER7> So the cost of college is skyrocketing and teachers are getting paid less and less. Where is the money going??

<comment><USER8> Research, Sports, executive salaries. There are a lot of costs besides teacher's salaries.

<comment><USER9> I thought sports were mainly profit centers.

<comment><USER8> Not exactly true:

[http://www.acenet.edu/news-room/Pages/Myth-College-Sports- Ar...](http://www.acenet.edu/news-room/Pages/Myth-College-Sports-Are-a-Cash- Cow2.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Good point on how the pay problem for adjunct faculty is intertwined with the "everyone gets a trophy" problem for students:

> "I knew the instructor was an adjunct, and that she taught at several places > to cobble together a living. I told the students that she was an adjunct, > and that the class was easy because she was afraid of losing her job." > Adjuncts are often evaluated solely based on student evaluations. As Rebecca > Schuman put it in her Slate article "Confessions of a Grade Inflator," > "popularity is the only thing keeping them employed."

<comment><USER11> Saw that happen.

Adjunct instructors went out of their way to be friendly, and non- confrontational. They would let stuff slide, exam do-overs, class meetings held at coffee shops etc etc.

Tenured professor not giving a damn about teaching, or being at least socially cordial. Some are just complete assholes.

Even saw the the behavior change when a professor got tenure. It was a pretty sharp switch to "don't give a fuck about anything" in a matter of a semester.

I am saying this as an average pattern I noticed, at one particular place, there are exceptions of course...

<comment><USER12> Interestingly, I saw more than one fantastic teacher get _denied_ tenure in my graduate department (a top research university), and there was always a rumor floating around that it was because they spent effort on teaching that could have instead gone to research. (One of them had written a textbook, and was told pretty explicitly that doing so had been a major mistake.) I've never heard of anyone getting denied tenure there or in any similar program for mediocre teaching evaluations.

Meanwhile, at the private liberal arts college where I teach, most of my senior colleagues are just as committed to good teaching as my junior colleagues are. (The younger folks may be more innovative, but by and large they don't _care_ more.) I've never seen someone's teaching go downhill when they get tenure; if anything, the research pressure eases up a bit at that point and they feel free to focus a bit more on the classroom.

So maybe what you've observed about tenure is accurate in some places, but it's at odds with the places I've been.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Let's change the terminology a bit here. A professor is someone with tenure is on a tenure track. A lecturer is someone who is not. The article isn't talking about professors, which in the USA relies on research, publishing, obtaining grants, and tenure. Yes, a lecturer teaching a low demand subject is going to have a hard time. Just like most positions, there exists a hierarchy. The reason why this doesn't exist for primary and secondary educators is because of unions and that can be argued either way.

</comment><comment><USER14> I think this is a natural result of having so many kids that have no idea of what to do in life.

Take a snapshot of the labor force of a country. Then try to figure out how many of those professions a high school kid understands. Do they know what those people find rewarding about their job? What they don't? Do they have any idea of how an entire career might look like? They don't. So when you ask one of those kids what they'll want to do when they stop formal education, they'll go back to the few things that they are taught are desirable, and the few other occupations that are close to them. One of which, for every single kid, is to teach, since they've been surrounded by them all their lives.

Keeping studying after getting a Bachelor's is also a very tempting option for kids that are afraid of change. Think of something very different from college, or get a master's? Go look for a job, or get a Ph.D? Inertia makes some people go for advanced degrees, even though they don't really understand the road they are getting into.

I know plenty of people who finished a Ph.D, started doing post docs, then realized that now their options had narrowed significantly, that the tenure track was not going to happen any time soon, so their options were to become adjuncts, study even more to consider teaching at a high school, or accept that 5-10 years worth of education was completely wasted. This leads to a major glut of qualified people, which then get paid very little.

I believe we should spend a whole lot of effort teaching kids what odds they are actually facing when they make their career choices. I still meet interns that are doing post graduate education at the same time that don't realize how terrible the odds really are, and that's with them working in a company that is one of the few industry outlets out there for people that went into Ph.Ds and then saw how scary the teaching market was, so it's not like they cannot hear plenty of stories.

Bad information just leads to bad resource allocation for all of us. We should help with that.

<comment><USER15> Passion is a weird thing. If a prospective adjunct walks up to you and says "I'm passionate about teaching in higher education," or "I derive what I judge to be a large amount of utility from the prospect of teaching in higher education," is it bad resource allocation for him or her to enter that market, because you think that if they had had a different set of inputs (information) earlier in their life, they may have become passionate about something else, or had a different weighting on their utility function? Who are we to say our ideas for what they should do are better?

By all means, we as a society should discourage people who don't know what they want to do from taking post-graduate education as a default choice, and we should discourage people who don't derive utility from teaching from being in the adjunct labor market. But I think that the majority of people in the adjunct labor market would actually say quotes like the ones above - they're not just "kids" without agency or passion for the work. And they would probably find it demeaning for the top post here to deign to "help" them to choose "rewarding... career choices." I'm pretty sure they've already chosen.

If we're going to spread information, let's focus on spreading transparency about hiring practices at universities to the students and grant-givers who fund their budgets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I was once offered an adjunct position to teach a class at my alma mater. They were excited to let me know I'd be paid $3,000 for teaching the class.

I had to turn them down, as I was already doing private corporate trainings, where we charged $3,000/day.

I didn't get paid that much, obviously, but I thought it was really amusing that the amounts lined up.

</comment><comment><USER17> These basal, fundamental flaws in the educational system give me pause to awe, and a gut feeling the US is gonna get trampled many times over by the likes of China within some decades. So little regulation and such harsh capitalism is eating its heart out bit by bit. I guess what keeps America bright at this point is a legacy from the past century, that's slowly eroding, and the brain drain sucked chiefly out of Asia and Eastern Europe--at least the same hands- off market attracts those people with today a stronger educational background than the average educated American, but how sustainable is it to keep importing talent? Is the power of capital enough to keep the american infrastructure and investment momentum on american grounds indefinitely?

<comment><USER18> Such little regulation? Harsh capitalism?

Our education system is propped up chiefly because of government. Most of the US goes to public schools, controlled by the government. Most university students go to public schools. Students get ridiculous loans they can't default on, courtesy of the government.

Harsh capitalism would be harsh on the universities who cling to a dying lecture/exam model that hasn't evolved for centuries. It would punish universities who don't produce results, instead of giving them students with free loans from the taxpayers. Harsh capitalism would see universities that can't evolve disappear.

I feel like blaming things on capitalism and lack of regulation is so overplayed and fashionable that people can't take a second to think that maybe regulation and government caused the problem in the first place. Everything the government does right is lauded while everything it does wrong is blamed on "corporate interests" and capitalism.

<comment><USER11> > Our education system is propped up chiefly because of government.

Obviously not propped enough if this professor died in poverty and students need 6 figure loans to graduate.

> Most of the US goes to public schools, controlled by the government.

As opposed to what? Controlled by Coca-Cola? Starbucks? -- "Do you have a degree?" \-- "I sure do, I graduated with MS in coffee arts (MsCA) from Starbucks University, Phoenix". Or just got a "PhD in applied lobbying from Lockheed".

> Students get ridiculous loans they can't default on, courtesy of the > government.

The problem is not to just stop giving loans, but let people go to universities without needing loans. If Universities are public, they should admit based on merit. And instead of cycling money through govt to student to university, just subsidize the university and make sure it doesn't spend money on admin assistants, triple layers of bureaucracy, new gyms with lazy rivers and other crap that is not needed. Maybe if it is too hard, just increase % of admitted students based on merit, some that couldn't quite make it and are rich perhaps could buy their way in.

> maybe regulation and government caused the problem in the first place.

Can you point to an example of an attested and well functioning higher learning system not regulated and propped by a government?

<comment><USER18> > Obviously not propped enough if this professor died in poverty and students > need 6 figure loans to graduate.

I argue that it is precisely because of government intervention that these things happen.

> As opposed to what? Controlled by Coca-Cola? Starbucks? -- "Do you have a > degree?" \-- "I sure do, I graduated with MS in coffee arts (MsCA) from > Starbucks University, Phoenix". Or just got a "PhD in applied lobbying from > Lockheed".

Are you implying that without government, we as a society would be unable to educate people?

> The problem is not to just stop giving loans, but let people go to > universities without needing loans.

That will make universities even more inefficient. Do you know what will ensure "make sure it doesn't spend money on admin assistants, triple layers of bureaucracy, new gyms with lazy rivers and other crap that is not needed?" The fear of failure that universities don't experience now. The fear that if you don't do your job, students will not willingly give you money. "Harsh capitalism" solves that problem.

<comment><USER11> > Are you implying that without government, we as a society would be unable to > educate people?

Well I don't have to imply you just have to show a few example of a successful world renown university run completely outside the control of a government. There are example of successful higher education institutions controlled and sponsored by governments. Western Europe has those example.

> The fear of failure that universities don't experience now.

Again, can you show one single example of a university outside the control of government that accomplishes and is driven by this mythical fear.

> "Harsh capitalism" solves that problem

Be honest now, have you been reading some Ayn Rand? That is fiction you know that, right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The education meat grinder destroys adjuncts, it saddles many students with crushing, non-self-liquidating debt and it outpaces inflation faster than any other major cost category:

[http://media2.s-nbcnews.com/j/streams/2013/April/130430/6C71...](http://media2.s-nbcnews.com/j/streams/2013/April/130430/6C7154731-allison- linnmsnbc6B6BD59F-9F84-0E5A-9652-32F626A03B51.blocks_desktop_medium.jpg)

A bad product, the employees and customers are treated poorly, and prices are skyrocketing. Hmmm.

<comment><USER20> It begs the question "where the hell is my tuition going?"

I was taking at a private "degree mill" part time classes at $180 per credit hour. The school required 7 students to teach a 4 credit class during normal hours. So at the minimum number of students the school was just making enough money for overhead... Most clases were 10-15 students. It was a private school, so tuition covered almost all their bills, no state funding.

Now ask where sutdents in State Funded Colleges money is going when there are 50 students (and more!) in a class? Where the hell is the undergrad tuition money going if the school only pays "minimum wage" for adjunct or grad school staff?? Where is State and Federal dinging going if Undergrads are paying more than their share of the university bills? It's not gping to TEACHING... And it's not going to "student contact" professors either, and its not "healthcare" or "retirement"... There's a giant money hole in the system.

<comment><USER21> You sound like you're trying to justify a bad decision...

Outside of the top-ranked flagship state schools -- which carry as much prestige as an ivy in some fields (e.g. in CS uiuc, u.w., austin, etc.) -- state schools are actually by far the best bang for the buck around.

For example, $180/cr is actually not far off from what most non-flagship state schools cost. In fact, there are schools in my state that cost within $10 or so of that. Crucially, all these institutions have quite good reputations in the region, no one perceives them as diploma mills, and they all have great CS departments with a sense of continuity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This doesn't invalidate the OP's message in a meaningful way, but if you're interested in the opening anecdote, a reporter from Slate delved deep into the circumstances of Ms. Vojtko and found a more complex story than one just of woe: [http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/education/20...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/education/2013/11/death_of_duquesne_adjunct_margaret_mary_vojtko_what_really_happened_to_her.html)

</comment><comment><USER23> There's a deeply-established credentialing systems that would blend very well with MOOCs and the like. That said, it's not the US undergrad one, and there's a worldwide belief that US university credentials are a big deal.

I don't know what things are like now, but in my grandfather's day European universities had a very different credentialing system from US undergrad institutions. In lieu of course credit, course-based grades, etc., they simply had a battery of (oral) examinations at the end.

US grad schools can be much like that. In essence, there were no course requirements for a PhD in mathematics at Harvard, but rather a three-day Qualifying Examination, a Minor Thesis (don't ask), and a traditional dissertation. Much the same was true of a physics PhD at Princeton then (the 1970s), except that there was an experiment in the mix (even for theoreticians). And in the Princeton math department, the joke was that students were asked the first day "Does anybody wish to submit his thesis?", and the record was 3 months.

</comment><comment><USER24> The first issue I'd like addressed is the outright _fraud_ that is going on here: schools are hiring adjunct professors to teach class, and then _don 't pay them to grade papers or meat with students_?

The other issue is the potential for market dynamics to correct these problems with college, if they exist: spending too much on admins, and skimping terribly on the teaching. Essentially kids are getting stiffed, and then employers are getting sub-par employees. If kids are going to college to get a better job, then these decisions on the part of schools are hurting them.

That said, if the economy really is all "bullshit jobs" (a sentiment that has floated around here recently) then the college admins know it won't matter how badly they educate the kids, and they'll never be found out. If that's the case, then I'd argue our larger concern is the fact that so many jobs are bullshit.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is a direct and entirely predictable result of the publicly-administered, nondischargeable-through-bankruptcy student loans. We can't have everyone going to college _and also_ have all colleges be nice workplaces. Society has recently taken the former option, but one can imagine that decision changing.

</comment><comment><USER26> This just means that college teachers in certain cases are in high supply.

<comment><USER27> One of the callout quotes from the article:

        Of course it's possible to love what one does, be good at it, and still be exploited.

A job that people love, with a glut of qualified people. "I always dreamed of being a professor."

<comment><USER26> The left liberals put themselves in high seats and decide who is being exploited and who is not. This is absolute thuggery. A Job and salary is the contract between two parties and everyone else should stay out of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> >"The caseworker paused and asked with incredulity, 'She was a professor?' I said yes. The caseworker was shocked; this was not the usual type of person for whom she was called in to help."

So it is unusual now, but it is going to become more common in the future?

> So adjuncting is decidedly not a middle-class job. But it does sound like > one, probably because, before the adjunct bubble, it was.

..."Professor" sounds like a middle-class job. I'm not in academia, but when I was in college in the 90's, adjunct sounded like a grad student on a stipend.

<comment><USER21> > I'm not in academia, but when I was in college in the 90's, adjunct sounded > like a grad student on a stipend.

This attitude was perhaps more appropriate a decade ago, before adjunct faculty were covering a significant portion of the course load and students could reasonably expect most of their courses to be taught by people with the word "professor" in their job title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> It is stunning to me that such well educated and hard working people would want to work in such a corrupt system instead of striking out on their own for the betterment of society.

<comment><USER30> A poverty wage is more livable than no wage at all; most adjunct faculty don't have the financial security to do some sort of revolutionary startup, and there are also only so many "radical" ideas that would attract investment from moneyed interests / hold the promise of huge profit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Do college rankings take the percentage of classes taught by tenure track professors into account? US News should dock schools with greater than X% of courses taught by adjuncts.

<comment><USER32> From a student's perspective that doesn't necessarily make sense. Tenure track professors could be great researchers, but that doesn't mean they are great teachers. Instructors, adjuncts, or graduate students can all teach well, oftentimes as well as a tenure track professor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> You would think with so many colleges in existence, that some of them would resist this sort of policy -- are there counter-examples to the trend towards increasing 'adjunctization'?

Also, if the cause of adjunctization is rising administrative costs in colleges -- are there any universities that have figured out that problem? That is, how to prevent a bloated bureaucracy of overpaid administrators?

</comment><comment><USER34> I knew a professor who was an adjunct. She was nice, taught the class well, was very intelligent, and even wrote a textbook used by other universities. She still had trouble finding steady teaching work.

</comment><comment><USER35> Teachers would probably have bigger problems.

According to clay christensen , the guy behind "the innovator's dillema" , more than 50% of colleges will go bankrupt soon(until 2020/2024).

<comment><USER36> I found that pretty startling, so I googled and found this article:

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-14/small-u-s- colleges-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-14/small-u-s-colleges- battle-death-spiral-as-enrollment-drops.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> >Some of these contingent employees are full-time lecturers, and many are adjunct instructors: part-time employees, paid per class, often without health insurance or retirement benefits. This is a relatively new phenomenon: in 1969, 78 percent of professors held tenure-track positions. By 2009 this percentage had shrunk to 33.5.

Would be interesting to know if college prices began rising at a higher ratio to the CPI around this time.

</comment><comment><USER38> And college is viewed by some as having dubious value. I know plenty of kids who racked up $200k in loans and can't find a job for the life of them.

</comment><comment><USER39> American education is such a mess. First, it feels like the majority of American college students graduate from college after spending four years on material that makes them no more appealing to employers. Second, there seems to be a thick layer of insulation between market signals and students, so that students can't even figure out what they should be learning, even if they were motivated to do so.

Third, colleges seem to teach whatever garbage they feel like, slap a "major" label on it, and charge a ridiculous amount for it. As institutions you would be hard pressed to find more inefficient organizations in the economy. I can't for the life of me understand where all the money is going. It shouldn't cost $100,000 to turn a bright high school student into a programmer in four years. In some European countries they do a better job in two years, with one third the budget, even though labor costs are higher (see Sweden).

We have to face the fact that a lot of college lecturers are zero value-add to their pupils. This is a big problem underlying the salary issue that is hardly ever discussed. Moving outwards, many college programs are zero value add too ... outside the stamp of a degree which they confer. Which if you think about it, you could get cheaper abroad.

Only a matter of time before India or some Baltic state makes cheap degrees available to US citizenship holders at cut-rate prices. I don't think American employers care much where your degree is from ... at least for engineers ... so long as you have the right to work in America ... which a citizen would have.

<comment><USER40> _I don 't think American employers care much where your degree is from ... at least for engineers ... so long as you have the right to work in America ... which a citizen would have._

Sure they do. Try getting a job at Google without a degree from MIT/Stanford. The name is more important than even graduating, even "Harvard dropout" has a certain cachet.

<comment><USER41> > Try getting a job at Google without a degree from MIT/Stanford.

I know a lot of people working at Google who don't even have degrees. There are over 5,000 Engineers in Google's American HQ. Thinking that everyone of them works there purely because of the brand name of whatever college they went to seems to be a rather self-limiting belief.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> The author is correct, "adjunct" perfectly describes the fact that teaching is an add-on at most universities. Those institutions exist to obtain grants for research and donations from alumni. Educating undergrads is an unfortunately coincidence from the perspective of most tuition-gathering organizations.

</comment><comment><USER43> All of these brilliant people have driven their institutions into the ground chasing rankings and fads like diversity and prestige buildings. Universities have taken on mountains of debt, and just like the portfolios of those university trained traders on Wall Street that destroyed the world a few years ago, they are very susceptible to unthinkable events like young people no longer finding college worth the money. It will only take a small decrease in enrollment rates for the wheels to come off. Bankruptcy is all but guaranteed.

<comment><USER44> Diversity is not a fad, and college entrance is more competitive than it has ever been.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> RCA takes this back to Reagan's War on Education. It's ongoing and it's destroyed the most important institution in the nation.

</comment><comment><USER46> dying industry, dying profession.

</comment><comment><USER47> At my computer science university (private university with HQ based in France) in downtown San Francisco, teachers were paid between 100$ and 300$ / hr, which I find decent.

100$ was mostly for teachers with not much experience, mostly students that graduated last year and were helping out as teachers.

<comment><USER48> Do you have a source for these numbers? $100/hr is highly suspect for "students that graduated last year and were helping out as teachers".

<comment><USER49> Define "hour". Hour in the classroom? Possibly. Assume a 12 week semester and 6 hours per week. Last time I taught a semester, I got about $5,000, so that is _nominally_ $70 per hour.

However, that doesn't count time answering student questions. That doesn't count office hours. That doesn't count making up homework or tests and grading them.

For me, each class I teach is about 40 hours of work per week. If _that_ is your number, then I got paid about $10 per hour. And I would have been better off at McDonalds as I would have gotten benefits for being full-time.

For those of us who like to teach, this is a Catch-22. It is good for students to have teachers who have been in industry--however, the pay is lousy relative to that same industry. At the same time, I would also be providing cheap labor to the university who _should_ be paying someone a reasonable amount of money.

<comment><USER50> 40 hours of work per week!? Eight hours a day, five days a week, for every class?

<comment><USER49> Yes.

I have to prep 2 3 hour lectures per week. Each lecture _easily_ takes 8 hours to prep. 6 assignments--have to make them up, set up automated tests, get things set up in source code control, and help students when things come back wrong if they can't figure it out. A midterm and a final--have to make it up and correct it. Add in office hours as well as replying to students via email and I'm easily at 40 hours per week.

This is why so many teachers just prep once and regurgitate each class (including assignments and tests). It's just _sooooo_ much less time consuming.

Don't feel bad. My poor TA (who was a student in a previous class I taught) was stunned too--"It takes this much time?!?!?! And you did this _by yourself_ for our class?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I'm often sad and happy when reading this problem. Sad because it's the state of things, which sucks! And happy because the more that it's said the more chance there is that instructors will actually be paid well, and students can learn in an environment that doesn't treat their faculty as cheap throw away labor.

This addresses many of the issues that we are solving with our startup Oplerno.

<comment><USER52> Exactly why do you think that discussing this issues in the open will automatically result in "instructors will actually be paid well, and students can learn in an environment that doesn't treat their faculty as cheap throw away labor."???

If the information in this article does not result in behavior changes (non tenured lecturers walking out of raw deals, or students requiring their University to disclose and guarantee a minimum percentage of courses taught by full time professors, or employers refusing to hire candidates coming out of degree mills) for a significant percentage of the incumbents, absolutely nothing is going to happen.

<comment><USER51> As a student, or parent, knowing that many universities are paying their adjunct instructors poorly meaning the instructors are turning their classes into popularity contests - by inflating grades and making the class 'easy' \- to ensure that they have a job next year would worry me. I interpret it to mean that a degree from some 'reputable' universities might be as good as one of the degree mill universities. My hope is that this will worry people who are taking on huge debts for degrees which might turn out to be worthless.

The adjuncts in the article and the ones that have recently been in the news, such as the homeless professor in the NYT, are the tip of the iceberg. And without adjuncts talking about it in the open nobody would know.

The kind of behavior change you are suggesting doesn't happen overnight, and certainly doesn't happen without there being viable alternatives. This is why we are trying to create a viable alternative.

<comment><USER52> I do not know if this will "worry people", but I am already worried and planning accordingly. I send my kids to private school (strong academic quality, not overly posh) in order to give them a good foundation to start from, but the assumption is that there wont be a "college fund" and they might end up going to the State University if (a) they get a full scholarship (not the credit sham that passes for it nowadays) or, (b) they get their act together as young business man and pay full tuition on their own. My wife knows how I feel about this and is fully on board, while my parents and in- laws think that I am a cheap bastard.

Being children, I have not yet discussed this with them. However, I plan to have this topic fully explored with each of them well in advance of their freshman year on high school.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Rockstar developers speak out about "100-hour weeks" comment - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/10/red-dead-redemption-2-devs-say-quoted-100-hour-weeks-arent-the-norm/ <comment><USER2> I've constantly asked, at least in companies I've worked for, that we stop giving out recognition awards based on someone working over the weekend or "deadheading" to finish a project.

You're rewarding people burning themselves out and giving away free work. It encourages this behavior by other projects, employees, and management.

Long term unhealthy for everyone.

<comment><USER3> The company can always get new developers, why would they care about their consumption of resources?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The only way it makes sense to abuse oneself like this is if you have an ownership stake in the company (a real one, not some unvested options), or get paid by the hour. Otherwise you should rinse your coffee cup and walk out the door after hour 40.

<comment><USER5> Or, you know, you enjoy your work/working

<comment><USER4> If you enjoy coding so much that you don't get enough of it at work, contribute to or start an open source project, or create a proprietary software product to sell for your own profit. Don't donate free work to the company that's already paying you a salary for a set amount of effort.

<comment><USER6> Well, I think the scale of the problems you can takle on your own in an open source project vs. as part of an established game dev studio team is quite different.

Please don't project your own perspective on other's people work/life balance and consider it as the only valid way that things can be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Disclaimer: I'm not now, nor have ever been, involved in the gaming industry. That said, the 2004 blog post _" EA: The Human Story_" might be of interest to some. [http://www.gameqol.org/ea-spouse/](http://www.gameqol.org/ea-spouse/) has a good write-up on it, including a link to the original post and a link to Slashdot comments.

</comment><comment><USER8> Why is an article from 2018 being submitted like it was new?

<comment><USER9> Usually these are tagged with a (2018) year tag. No one has requested it yet today, but if dang or another mod sees it they will add it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Oct 18, 2018

</comment><comment><USER11> Crazy things i am reading about the game industry. The thing is, game companies small or large survive as long as they produce games, so i am not surprised there are so many issues around work pressure. I think this proves that game development should be a business for small companies and indies.</comment>


Online retailers call Internet sales tax a 'nightmare' - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2013/05/07/smallbusiness/internet-sales-tax/index.html

<comment><AUTHOR> > There are maybe 7,500 businesses that would be affected by the law, > according to a study commissioned by Amazon, which has voiced strong support > for the bill.

Keeping in mind that Amazon's support for the bill may bias them to undercount, does that number smell right? What % of online sales come from the top 7,500? Is that enough businesses to support the middlemen we are assured will pop up to help handle every state's software / jurisdictions / details on local tax rates for different types of items and shipping and handling and everything else?

</comment><comment><USER2> Something I don't get - this seems like interstate commerce - isn't it under federal regulation and not state?</comment>


Exception management at the heart of artificial intelligence performance - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/processone/exception-management-at-the-heart-of-artificial-intelligence-performance-e9a4dafefc03 <comment><USER2> What I find interesting is to link exception handling in real or virtual process to the way we handle it in programming languages.

Exception handling is one of the main difference between a junior and senior programmer. Beginner programmers will often struggle getting their code working in real life due to their focus on the ideal code path.

It also reminds me of Erlang "Let it crash" philosophy: you cannot always handle all possible errors that can happen in real situation and it is often best to design your system to be able to cope and recover from transient unexpected errors. This is at the heart of Erlang worker and supervisor architecture design.</comment>


Show HN: I made a live Loadshedding status page in React - <AUTHOR> https://www.ronaldlangeveld.com/loadshedding <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN. I live in South Africa and we unfortunately have this thing called Loadshedding that causes the power to go off every couple of hours a few times a day.

I made a little web app to that shows the current status of the power grid, pretty much to get the hang of React JS.

Cheers!

<comment><USER2> I was wondering what loadshedding was for a second, then I read your comment. Nice clean app, unfortunate that you had to make it. I'm not totally sure how loadshedding works but it seems like it would only affect a region of the country, would be nice to add a map that shows the affected areas (assuming that sort of data is exposed)</comment></comment>


18F is a Financial Disaster - <AUTHOR> http://www.sacbee.com/news/business/technology/article110227682.html <comment><USER2> Comrades! This seems like a good use of taxpayer dollars :-/

FTA:

 _The report said 18F spent about 20 hours or $4,148 on two customized "bots" for Slack, an online messaging application. One of the automated programs would monitor users' messages for the words "guys," "guyz" and "dudes," which could have been perceived as being not inclusive for women. It prompted users to consider replacing those words with 21 options that included buds, compatriots, fellow humans, posse, team, mateys, persons of any kind, organic carbon-based life-forms living on the third planet from the sun, comrades and cats._

<comment><USER3> What's so bad about a few people spending some time on a bot to improve inclusivity in the organization?

Do you know what 18F competes with? $4000 is literally irrelevant.

<comment><USER2> Because it's taxpayer money.

$4,000 for some engineers to fuck around at work might not sound much but that $4,000 came from taxing people. Believe it or not but to a lot of people $4,000 is a lot of money. That $4,000 could go to school supplies, education, WIC, Medicare, etc.

It also illustrates tax payer subsidized income inequality while a lot of people are struggling. Again some highly paid engineer making more money fucking around at work than some other taxpayer delivering real value but at lower wage.

<comment><USER4> While I agree that given the information from the Inspector General's report, 18F certainly needs to be more disciplined about how it spends its resources, do you really think that 18F is the most egregious example of a government agency fucking around and wasting money? How about the DoD's $8.5 trillion of unaccounted taxpayer money [0]?

[0] [http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/03/19/85-Trillion- Unaccou...](http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/03/19/85-Trillion-Unaccounted- Should-Congress-Increase-Defense-Budget)

<comment><USER2> Of course it is not the most egregious. That someone else is wasting several orders of magnitude more money doesn't make it OK for 18F waste a smaller amount.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "18F is a Financial Disaster" is not the title of the article and is explicit editorialising.

On a lighter note, seems like a fun place to work! And the kind of attitudes on display here seem to be the kind you'd expect from a group of people who have the VC-funded mindset, but the cost-pressures of the US's government budget.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. Many of the "unbillable" work items listed in the article seem to be establishing important procedures and tools to improve productivity and a positive work environment, which most tech companies do as well.

Makes you wonder whether the author and the poster are affiliated with one of those old-school government consulting or contractor companies that would gladly see 18F disappear so that the government would outsource the work instead.

<comment><USER6> > Agreed. Many of the "unbillable" work items listed in the article seem to be > establishing important procedures and tools to improve productivity and a > positive work environment, which most tech companies do as well.

I have nothing but disdain for someone spending $4,000 of public money writing a Slackbot to politely encourage you to not use the words "guys" or "dudes" [1] [2]. If that's important to you, go burn up VC dollars doing that, not tax money that is desperately needed for real work. This opinion is not about having an agenda; that's common sense.

I'm off to craft a FOIA request for the historical Slack logs for 18F.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12792768](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12792768)

[2] [https://18f.gsa.gov/2016/01/12/hacking-inclusion-by- customiz...](https://18f.gsa.gov/2016/01/12/hacking-inclusion-by-customizing- a-slack-bot/)

<comment><USER4> While I completely agree with you that spending $4,000 on these slack bots is a waste of time, that is still a minute fraction of the cost of "unbillable" items listed by this article. Why not submit an FOIA request on one of the other items instead, such as the $140k spend on "developing the brand" and find out what actually involved? [0]

If you really want to be outraged by a waste of taxpayer dollars, I would recommend that you take a look at how much state governments are overspending on prisons vs education [1], wasteful spending in defense [2], and the $8.5 __trillion __in unaccounted taxpayer dollars spent on defense [3].

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12793035](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12793035)

[1] [http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/01/pf/college/higher- education-...](http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/01/pf/college/higher-education- prison-state-spending/)

[2] [http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/10/29/where-did-us- taxp...](http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/10/29/where-did-us-taxpayer- money-go-tale-afghanistan-43m-gas-station.html)

[3] [http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/03/19/85-Trillion- Unaccou...](http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/03/19/85-Trillion-Unaccounted- Should-Congress-Increase-Defense-Budget)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Question for anybody with 18F here... do many of your management personnel have experience with consulting (particularly on government projects) or are your hires primarily from product backgrounds?

I'm of the mind that this is about what I'd expect from people who are generally more concerned with less-tangibles like culture and product, but I don't really know if that's the general background of the personnel hired.

My suspicion is that if you looked at most agencies you'd see this same kind of apparent frivolity but in a way that makes it less easy to track. It also bears repeating that while some of the stories presented in the article are excessive, 18f has always seemed to me to be more aimed at being a force multiplier for other agencies rather than just boots on the ground. When I worked in government non-profit (of the IRS designation, that is!) we spent quite a bit of "non billable" time doing exactly that instead of providing services directly. Once I started consulting in the private sector though, the billable hour became much more important.

<comment><USER4> I am not affiliated with 18F but do work for a major tech company. I am not convinced that the consulting model is better for the kinds of projects that 18F is trying to undertake, such as developing the web services for government agencies.

Most tech companies invest in things such as culture, internal productivity tools, and developer and testing infrastructure that are not deliverables to clients and thus not billable. While these may incur a higher start-up cost, these are critical for ensuring long-term productivity.

Correct me if I am wrong but my impression is that the consulting world is much more concerned with delivering and then moving onto the next project, with very little shared work or infrastructure between projects.

I'm sure 18F has areas of improvement for how it spends its resources and how it tracks costs and billing. Every organization does. However, I would not be surprised if the reason 18F exists is that the government found that outsourcing this work to consultants led to higher costs and lower quality deliverables compared to products being released by tech companies and thus wanted to try a different approach.

<comment><USER7> I tend to be of the same mind, but if justifying their existence through billing their services to other government agencies is a part of their charter, then they pretty much have to consider that. Even if a significant portion of their budget is intended to be internally billed, going off on a logo redesign that "costs" 140k worth of meetings and face time to get buy-in is simply not a worthwhile use of the time.

As I said earlier I'm not sure that the billable hour is the best way to judge their effectiveness but as a long-time consultant who's worked in both government and private settings, they would do well to find a better compromise of the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > "At a time when federal departments were cutting budgets, it was funded > under a model that envisioned it would earn back more money than it cost to > run"

I would have interpreted this as meaning "would make net savings by being cheaper than projects outsourced by federal departments", not "would make a net financial gain". The latter seems highly unrealistic. I assume they're producing value for the government for the $32 million "loss" quoted.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm not sure 18F was supposed to make money. It's govenment funded and produces things like [https://analytics.usa.gov/](https://analytics.usa.gov/) and [https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/](https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/)

<comment><USER10> Being a government agency, it may in fact be prohibited from making money.

"Not supposed to make money" isn't the same thing as "spend $140,000 on making your logos look hipper".

<comment><USER2> Revenue and profit are different. For example USPS has revenue.

Based on the IG's comments it looks like the expectation is that 18F should be billing project hours.

<comment><USER11> USPS is not a government agency. Only kinda sorta.

<comment><USER2> From Wikipedia:

 _The United States Postal Service (USPS), (also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or Postal Service), is an independent agency of the United States government responsible for providing postal service in the United States. It is one of the few government agencies explicitly authorized by the United States Constitution._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is what happens when people given little or no incentive to actively create something that another would buy. When someone is trying to make ends meet AND create a product they prioritize necessities and hammer out something usable, when given free reign most just become a drain (some create amazing things given this chance though). Optimally you could hire someone who has learned this lesson.</comment>


How to sell debt to investors - <AUTHOR> http://www.venturehacks.com/articles/attractive-debt <comment><USER2> I'm still not buying unless a valuation is attached (his option four). Here is my reasoning:

Many startups are interested in using a convertible note for their early funding. I've heard three reasons:

1\. It's less paperwork than preferred stock

2\. VCs would rather do a Series-A than a Series-B (one solution is to name this first round "Series-Seed")

3\. It lets them avoid having to determine a valuation

The first two reasons seem fine to me, assuming that they are true. The third reason is bad.

These convertible notes typically convert into preferred stock upon the next major financing (presumably the Series-A led by some VC), usually at some discount to what the VC pays (perhaps 20%). Sometimes there is a cap on this conversion price. If that cap would be a reasonable pre-money valuation today, then third reason doesn't really apply, since a valuation was in fact determined.

However, if there is no cap on the conversion price, or that cap is very high, then you are asking investors to give you money today, but not giving them the upside between now and then next major funding (which probably won't occur for another 6 - 12 months). During this 6-12 months you will build and hopefully launch a product and begin to prove it's market potential, or not. That's a lot of uncertainty.

Put another way, I'd rather wait 6-12 months to see what you build, how successful it is, and how well your team executes, and then decide whether or not to invest. And I'd gladly pay an extra 30%. However, if you need the money today, then it needs to be at today's valuation, not next year's.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Paul,

There are lots of benefits to doing debt in a seed round. We discuss them in detail here: <http://www.venturehacks.com/articles/debt-benefits>

Here's a summary from the article: "Convertible debt is often the best instrument for a seed round. You can close the debt cheaply and quickly and then turn your focus back to your customers. That's good for the company and its investors since speed is a major competitive advantage of a startup. If you or your investors are veering away from convenience, low cost, and speed, you are missing the point of seed stage debt!

"The seed stage is the worst possible time for the founders to negotiate an equity financing. The company is nebulous, the founders are inexperienced, and the company is starved for cash and time. The team should be testing hypotheses about their business, not negotiating complicated term sheets."

See the article for details: <http://www.venturehacks.com/articles/debt- benefits>

A cap doesn't determine a valuation. It just sets a cap. Setting a valuation implies buying preferred stock, I assume you don't want to buy common stock in the business. That means negotiating investor rights--that is a pain in the ass. (I've never seen this but I suppose you could defer negotiating investor rights and just say that the seed investors will get the same rights as the eventual Series A investors. Anybody want to chime in?)

A cap can be closer to the founder's high minimum expectations and avoids a long road show. A cap avoids setting a high valuation and then doing a down round in the Series A. A cap avoids setting a low valuation and then being unable to substantially increase the valuation if you do a Series A soon afterward.

If you want more of a reward, we suggested increasing the discount. A 50% discount guarantees you a 2x paper return on your money. A 40% discount guarantees a 1.7x paper return. You can also have the discount increase over time.

As always, our hacks are generalized and should be tailored to the specific circumstances. And your deal is mainly determined by your leverage, nothing else: e.g. every deal that closes is a "good deal".

<comment><USER2> I agree with avoiding complicated negotiations, which is why I'm fine with debt, but only if it is capped at a reasonable valuation.

Consider these two possible series-A investments:

\- Sequoia at a $5M pre

\- Some lame VC at a $15M pre

As a seed investor, I would probably prefer Sequoia (obviously the other details matter, but on average), meaning that if they went with the lame VC I would get double-hurt with uncapped debt (I get a smaller percentage of a company that has a smaller chance of success).</comment></comment></comment>


Humane.js 3.0 - notifications (spawning, unique instances, multiple themes) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/wavded/humane-js

<comment><USER2> Very useful, I wasn't aware of the library. Will try it right away!</comment>


The Mathematics Behind Stopping a Car - <AUTHOR> http://arachnoid.com/lutusp/auto.html <comment><USER2> In driver's ed, they teach a 2-second following distance from the car in front of you (4 seconds, perhaps, if possible; in traffic, however, 4 seconds is a hole to be filled by a greedy-algorithm-piloted car). The arguments in favor of this are that it's easy, and it scales linearly with velocity, so that you'll be further behind when moving faster, and have more time to react.

At first blush, this article seems to contradict that: since stopping time is O(n^2), we should need a quadratic stopping distance formula. However, upon further consideration, it seems to me that the 2-second rule ought to be just fine. That allows for reaction time (assumed to be 1.5sec in the article), and the quadratic part is taken care of by the fact that the other car can't just stop dead in front of us, but has to take the same quadratic stopping time that we do.

<comment><USER3> Yes, if you were to drive as if every car in front of you could run into a magically appearing brick wall, then you would really need such large distances. Luckily, that's not the case.

However, if you want to drive in compliance with the "Basic Speed Law", which states "No person shall drive a vehicle upon a highway at a speed greater than is reasonable or prudent having due regard for weather, visibility, the traffic on, and the surface and width of, the highway, and in no event at a speed which endangers the safety of persons or property", ie. taking into account that you can run into stationary things, then you really have to conclude that your _visibility_ must scale as v^2. So if you are going around a corner and need to be able to stop in case the road is blocked (ie CA 17) then this _is_ the distance you care about.

As an aside, I think it's quite an interesting question as to what the optimal distance is if you take into account the fact that people will cut into your cushion space and make it <50% of what it was. It seems it will be the largest distance that other drivers still think is too small to merge into.

<comment><USER4> It's not V^2 due to reaction time. Assuming 1.5 seconds it's around 1.5s * V + k * V^2. And using his numbers:

      10MPH = 27feet
      20MPH = 64feet
      80MPH = 496feet

The point is even at low speeds you still have a fairly long stopping distance. Which is why you can see so many fender benders in stop and go traffic.

PS: At high speeds wind resistance can dramatically affect stopping distance, but your breaks have limits on how much heat they can take so it's a fairly convoluted equation.

<comment><USER3> High-velocity behavior is v^2, which where it matters. The linear part quickly becomes negligible. And wind resistance is still v^2 so it'll still go as v^2 only slower.

The brake limit is an interesting one, though. Apparently brakes are not providing a constant brake _torque_ as one would naively expect, but instead a constant dissipation power. This is why everyone can lock their brakes going slowly, but it's normally quite hard to do if you're going 80mph. (For a normal "family" car.)

<comment><USER4> Wind resistance is V^3. Drag is V^2, but you multiply that by the distance traveled.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think at non slow speeds, most people have about the same stopping distance.

This is because the faster you are going the harder you typically press on the brake.

Very very few times will you need an emergency stop and max out your brakes.

Most of the time you do gentle braking, and a slightly harder braking at greater speeds.

The net result is that typical (not minimum) braking distances do not change much with speed.

<comment><USER6> Yes - the article assumes that brakes operate by converting the kinetic energy of the car at a constant rate and thus this is the limiting factor.

Yet with decent brakes most of us do an emergency stop as hard as possible without skidding, so the limiting factor is the traction with the road.</comment></comment>


John Searle: Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHKwIYsPXLg <comment><USER2> There isn't much new here. Skip ahead to the first audience question from Ray Kurzweil ([http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHKwIYsPXLg&t=38m51s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHKwIYsPXLg&t=38m51s)).

Kurzweil, in summary, asks "You say that a machine manipulating symbols can't have consciousness. Why is this different than consciousness arising neurons manipulating neurotransmitter concentrations?" Searle gives a non-answer: "My dog has consciousness because I can look at it and conclude that it has consciousness."

<comment><USER3> Yeah honestly I don't get what he is really contributing (and I'm sort of an AI skeptic). In 2000 in undergrad, I recall checking out some of his books from the library because people said he was important, and I learned about the "Chinese Room" argument [1] in class.

How is it even an argument? It doesn't illuminate anything, and it's not even clever. It seems like the most facile wrong-headed stab at refutation, by begging the question. As far as I can tell, the argument is, "well you can make this room that manipulates symbols like a computer, and of course it's not conscious, so a computer can't be either"? There are so many problems with this argument I don't even know where to begin.

The fact that he appears to think that changing a "computer" to a "room" has persuasive power just makes it all the more antiquated. As if people can't understand the idea that computers "just" manipulate symbols? Changing it to a "room" adds nothing.

[1] [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese- room/](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/)

<comment><USER4> I thought the idea was that because the only part of the room actually doing things (the person), doesn't understand chinese?

I mean, agree with it or not, but I think that's a bit stronger than just, making it seem intuitively worse because its a room instead of "a computer"?

I think the important part isn't the swap of "room" for "computer", but instead the swap of "person" for "cpu"?

<comment><USER5> Yeah, but the system would be the person + the lookup tables, not just the person. The problem is, we don't tend to say "does a room with a person in it and several books have this knowledge?" Relying on a system that doesn't tend to get grouped together (there's no term for the system human + book inside room), and having only one animate object (so that people think of the animate object as the system instead of the animate and inanimate objects), as well as asking the question only about the animate part of the system, all seem to suggest that the purpose of the thought experiment is to mislead people.

A better example would be saying something like - does this company have the knowledge to make a particular product? We can say that no individual member of the company does, but the company as a whole does.

<comment><USER4> I think this is called the "systems response".

Which, well there's a whole series of responses back and forth, with different ideas about what is or is not a good response.

One idea describes a machine where each state of the program is pre-computed, and the computer steps through the states one by one, but in each state, if the next of the pre-computed states was wrong (i.e. would not be the next step of the program, following from the current state), if (e.g.) a switch was flipped, it would cause the program to be computed correctly despite the pre- computed states being wrong, and if the switch is not flipped, then it would continue along the pre-computer states. If the switch is flipped on, or if its flipped off, and all the pre-computer states are correct, the same things happen, and it does not interact with the switch at all. If all the pre- computed states are nonsense, and the switch is flipped on, then it runs the program correctly, despite the pre-computed states being nonsense.

So, suppose that if the pre-computed states are all wrong, and the switch is on, that that counts as conscious. Then, if the pre-computed states are all correct, and the switch is on, would that still be conscious? What if almost all the pre-computed states were wrong, but a few were right? It doesn't seem like there is an obvious cutoff point between "all the pre-computed steps are wrong" and "all the pre-computer steps are right", where there would be a switch between what is conscious. So then, one might conclude that the one where all the pre-computed steps are right, and the switch is on, is just as conscious as the one which has the switch on but all the pre-computed states are wrong.

But then what of the one where all the pre-computed states are right, and the switch is off?

The switch does not interact with the rest of the stuff unless a pre-computed next step would be wrong, so how could it be that when the switch is on, the one with all the pre-computations is conscious, but when it is off, it isn't?

But the one with all the pre-computations correct, and the switch off, is not particularly different from just reading the list of states in a book.

If one grants consciousness to that, why not grant it to e.g. fictional characters that "communicate with" the reader?

One might come up with some sort of thing like, it depends on how it interacts with the world, and it doesn't make sense for it to have pre-computed steps if it is interacting with the world in new ways, that might be a way out. Or one could argue that it really does matter if the switch is flipped one way or the other, and when you flip it back and forth it switches between being actually conscious and being, basically, a p-zombie. And speaking of which you could say, "well what if the same thing is done with brain states being pre- computed?", etc. etc.

I think the Chinese Room problem, while not conclusive, is a useful introduction to these issues?

<comment><USER6> > But the one with all the pre-computations correct, and the switch off, is > not particularly different from just reading the list of states in a book.

The states were (probably) produced by computing a conscious mind and recording the result.

Follow the improbability. The behavior has to come from _somewhere_. That somewhere is probably conscious.

Similarly, authors are conscious, so they know how conscious characters behave.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think Searle's mostly correct and Kurzweil's completely wrong on this. It took me a long time to understand Searle's argument, because Searle conflates consciousness and intelligence and this confuses matters. Understanding Chinese is a difficult problem requiring intelligence, but I don't think it requires consciousness.

It is important to distinguish between "understanding Chinese" and "knowing what it's like to understand Chinese". We immediately have a problem: knowing what it's like to understand Chinese involves various qualia, none of which is unique to Chinese speakers.

So I'll simplify the argument. Instead of having a room with a book containing rules about Chinese, and a person inside who doesn't Chinese, we have a room, with some coloured filters, and a person who can't see any colours at all (i.e. who has achromatopsia). Such people (e.g. [http://www.achromatopsia.info/knut-nordby- achromatopsia-p/](http://www.achromatopsia.info/knut-nordby-achromatopsia-p/)) will confirm they have no idea what it's like to see colours. If you shove a sheet of coloured paper under the door, the person in the room will place the different filters on top of the sheet in turn, and by seeing how dark the paper then looks, be able to determine its colour, which he'll write on the paper, and pass it back to the person outside. The person outside thinks the person inside can distinguish colours, but the person inside will confirm that not only can he not, but he doesn't even know what it's like. Nothing else in the room is obviously conscious.

A propos of the dog, this is the other minds problem. It's entirely possible that I'm the only conscious being in the universe and everyone else (and their pets) are zombies. But we think that people, dogs, etc. are conscious because they are similar to us in important ways. Kurzweil presumably considers computers to be conscious too. Computers can be intelligent, and maybe in a few years or decades will be able to pass themselves off over the Internet as Chinese speakers, but there's no reason to believe computers have qualia (i.e. know what anything is like), and given the above argument, every reason to believe that they don't.

<comment><USER8> I disagree completely. After time the color filter will start to associate various concepts and feelings add images with various colors. This association is what starts making the colors themselves have meaning even if they can't see the colors the same way that you and I can. There's no way to prove that we all see colors the same way anyway. But that doesn't mean that we don't believe that were conscious. I think I see that you're saying we cannot make any claims about others perhaps but only can talk about how we feel. But I feel like the room example is actually misleading in this respect. Another way of thinking about it is our brain starts to associate things and if those clusters of associations that give those things meaning. The experience of experience and color is only important because experience and color has a web of other associated experiences that those colors remind us of. So extending the room experiment to the experience of a baby who throughout the entire life sees colors or the filter image version of these colors at various moments to associate with various things. In this example we can imagine that the baby will in fact associate let's say blue with I don't know this great unknown half of our outside ceiling that we see during the day. And then that will take on something more to it but it is difficult admittedly to explain.

<comment><USER7> > After time the color filter will start to associate various concepts and > feelings add images with various colors. This association is what starts > making the colors themselves have meaning even if they can't see the colors > the same way that you and I can.

The filters are just pieces of transparent coloured plastic. How are they capable of forming associations?

Also, associations on their own (e.g. blue with sky, red with blood, green with grass) don't give you any idea what colours are like. Knut Nordby (and many other people with achromatopsia) knew these associations as well as you or I know them, but made it quite clear that he had no idea what it was like to see in colour.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I can only recommend reading this paper: [http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf](http://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf)

It really lives up to its title. Suddenly computational complexity is not just a highly technical CS matter anymore, and the Chinese Room paradox is explained away successfully, at least for me.

</comment><comment><USER10> Searle makes two assertions:

1) Syntax without semantics is not understanding. 2) Simulation is not duplication.

Claim 1 is a criticism of old-style Symbolic AI that was in fashion when he first formulated his argument. This is obviously right, but we're already moving past this. For example, word2vec or the recent progress in generating image descriptions with neural nets. The semantic associations are not nearly as complex as those of a human child, but we're past the point of just manipulating empty symbols.

Claim 2 is an assertion about the hard problem of consciousness. In other words, about what kinds of information processing systems would have subjective conscious experiences. No one actually has an answer for this yet, just intuitions. I can't really see why a physical instantiation of a certain process in meat should be different from a mathematically equivalent instantiation on a Turing machine. He has a different intuition. But neither one of us can prove anything, so there's nothing else to say.

<comment><USER11> I think Claim 1 is actually more about determinism; that if by knowing all the inputs you can reliably get the same outputs what you have isn't consciousness.

Neural nets are somewhat starting to escape that dynamic but there still isn't a neural net that reliable pulls in a continuous stream of randomness to generate meaningful behaviour like our consciousness does.

Now to be honest; I'm not _entirely_ sure if John Searle would agree that that _is_ consciousness when we do get there but I do agree with him that deterministic consciousness is essentially a contradictio in terminis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The systems response is pretty much the right answer. You can put yourself at any level of reductionism of a complex system and ask how in the hell the system accomplishes anything. If you imagine yourself running a simulation of physics on paper for the universe, you may ask yourself, how does this simulation create jellyfish.

I think people fall for Searle's argument the same way people fall for creationist arguments that make evolution seem absurd. Complex systems that evolve over long periods of time have enormous logical depth complexity and exhibit emergent properties that really can't be computed analytically, but only but running the simulation, and observing macroscopic patterns.

If I run a cellular automaton that computes the sound wave frequencies of a symphony playing one of Mozart's compositions, and it takes trillions of steps before even the first second of sound is output, you can rightly ask, at any state, how is this thing creating music?

</comment><comment><USER13> Consciousness and understanding are human created symbolism. Talking about it seriously is a waste of time.

I could be an empty shell imitating a human perfectly, all other humans would buy my lack of consciousness, and nothing would be different, from their perspective I exist, from mine, I don't have mine.

How does one know that I really understand something? Maybe I can answer all the questions to convince them?

</comment><comment><USER14> It's pretty frustrating to watch. Feels like an endless repetition of "well humans and dogs are conscious because that's self evident". There's no sufficient demarcation criterion other than "I know it when I see it" that he seems to apply. [I guess having a semantics is his criterion but he doesn't elaborate on a criterion for that]

The audience question about intelligent design summed up my frustration nicely (or rather the amoeba evolving part of it).

</comment><comment><USER15> I think what it boils down to is that Searle believes consciousness is a real thing that exists in the universe. A simulation of a thing isn't the same as the thing itself, no matter how accurate the outputs. The Chinese Room argument just amplifies that intuition (my guess is that the idea of a room was inspired by the Turing Test).

I think studying the brain (as opposed to philosophical arguments) is the thing that will eventually answer these kinds of questions, though.

</comment><comment><USER16> I think the argument about consciousness is vacuous. Searle admits we might create an AI which acts 100% like a human in every way.

Nothing Searle says stands in the way of creating intelligent or super- intelligent entities. All Searle is saying is those entities won't be conscious.

No can prove this claim today. But more significantly I think it's extremely likely no one will ever prove the claim. Consciousness is a private subjective experience. I think it's likely you simply cannot prove it exists or doesn't exist.

Mankind will create a human-level robots and we'll watch them think and create and love and cry and we'll simply not know what their conscious experience is.

Even if we did _prove_ it one way or the other, the popular opinion would be unaffected.

Some big chunk of people will insist robots are conscious entities who feel pain and have rights. And some big chunk of people will insist they are not conscious.

It might be our final big debate. An abstruse _proof_ is not going to change anyone's mind. Look at how social policies are debated today. Proof is not a factor.

</comment><comment><USER17> So, supposing there's any chance that it has consciousness, is there any sort of movement doing all it can to put the brakes on AI research? If it's true, it's literally the precursor to the worst realistic (or hypothetical, really) outcome I can fathom, which has been discussed before on HN (simulated hell, etc). I'm not sure why more people aren't concerned about it. Or is it just that there's "no way to stop progress" as they say, and this is just something we're going to learn to live with, the way we live with, say, the mistreatment of animals?

<comment><USER18> We are sufficiently far away from creating machines that humans would consider to have consciousness that it's not really a problem so far. Eventually we'll probably have to think about robot rights, but I guess we still have a few decades until they're sufficiently advanced. But judging from how we treat, eg. great apes, who are so very similar to us, I wouldn't want to be a robot capable of suffering.

<comment><USER17> I'd think that if there are people forward thinking enough to consider the consequences to humans (Elon Musk, Singularity Institute), there should be people forward thinking enough to consider the consequences to the AIs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This guy so smart but at the same time such an idiot. SYNTAX and SEMANTICS are essentially SAME THING. It's only a context-dependent difference, and this difference is quantitative, even if we still don't have a good enough definition of what those quantitative variables underlying them are. You must have a really "fractured" mind not to instantly "get it". And "INTRINSIC" is simply a void concept: nothing is intrinsic, everything (the universe and all) is obviously observer dependent, it just may be that the observer can be a "huge entity" that some people choose to personalize and call God.

It's amazing to me that people with such a pathological disconnect between mind and intuition can get so far in life. He's incredibly smart, has a great intuition, but when exposed to some problems he simply can't CONNECT his REASON with his INTUITION. _This is a MENTAL ILLNESS and we should invest in developing ways to treat it, seriously!_

Of course that "the room + person + books + rule books + scratch paper" can be self conscious. You can ask the room questions about "itself" and it will answer, proving that it has a model of itself, even if that model is not specifically encoded anywhere. It's just like mathematics, if you have a procedural definitions for the set of all natural numbers (ie. a definition that can be executed to generate the first and the next natural number), you "have" the entire set of natural numbers, even if you don't have them all written down on a piece of paper. Same way, if you have the processes for consciousness, you have consciousness, even if you can't pinpoint "where" in space and time exactly is. Consciousness is closer to a concept like "prime numbers" than to a physical thing like "a rock", you don't need a space and time for the concept of prime numbers to exist in, it just is.

His way o "depersonalizing" conscious "machines" is akin to Hitler's way of depersonalizing Jews, and this "mental disease" will probably lead to similar genocides, even if the victims will not be "human" ...at least in the first phase, because you'll obviously get a HUGE retaliation in reply to any such stupidity, and my bet it that such a retaliation will be what will end the human race.

Now, of course the Chinese room discussion is stupid: you can't have "human- like consciousness" with one Chinese room. You'd need a network of Chinese rooms that talk to each other and also operate under constraints that make their survival dependent on their ability to model themselves and their neighbors, in order to generate "human-like consciousness".

<comment><USER20> Well, it's Searle after all. It's always funny to re-read Derrida's attack on his problematic line of thought[0].

0\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_Inc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_Inc)</comment></comment>


Get Started with Flutter Authentication - <AUTHOR> https://auth0.com/blog/get-started-with-flutter-authentication/ <comment><AUTHOR> Get Started with Flutter Authentication and learn how to add user authentication to Flutter apps using OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect.</comment>


How to Build an Inverse Parser (1997) - <AUTHOR> http://www.erasmatazz.com/library/the-journal-of-computer/jcgd-volume-6/how-to-build-an-inverse.html <comment><USER2> > An inverse parser treats each command as a sequence of words obeying a > grammar -- in other words, a sentence. The sentence is composed by the user > by adding words in sequence until the sentence is complete. This has an > important benefit: it uses a metaphor (the sentence) that the player already > grasps, thereby collapsing the menu navigation problem into a construct that > the player is comfortable with.

This essentially describes how the UI of Doug Engelbart's NLS system worked. Each command was describe in a DSL called the command meta language. These grammars where then compiled into a tree over which the command interpreter followed as the user entered in commands. At each step the UI would display feedback to the user about what input they had already entered.

I implemented such an interface in my first prototype of the system that I built in anyone wants to play around with such an interface.[1] I am currently working on a cleaner and more accessible version, but it is still in the design phase and not usable yet.

[1] [https://github.com/smarks159/hyperdocument-system- wiki](https://github.com/smarks159/hyperdocument-system-wiki)

</comment><comment><USER3> This sounds a lot like auto-completion in a good IDE.

<comment><USER4> Pretty much what I was thinking. The article is dated 1997 and I am pretty sure I didn't see an autocomplete for nearly to a decade after that (tab completion, yes).

I love autocompletes from both a user and developer viewpoint (they stop my users entering crap, and it's significantly easier for them as well).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I enjoyed the closing line of the article:

> That is, after all, the acid test of a truly clean user interface: nobody > notices it.

</comment><comment><USER6> In case anyone's wondering, "the Siboot project" refers to the game _Trust & Betrayal: The Legacy of Siboot_, which had the player negotiating with AI agents to gather information needed to win "mind combat" duels:

[https://youtu.be/7ErHi8uElYI](https://youtu.be/7ErHi8uElYI) (2:20 shows an example conversation)

e: It seems the Internet Archive has an emulated version as well:

[https://archive.org/details/msdos_Trust_and_Betrayal_- _The_L...](https://archive.org/details/msdos_Trust_and_Betrayal_- _The_Legacy_of_Siboot_1987)

Sadly, it doesn't seem to have the manual.

<comment><AUTHOR> Several abandonware websites host the manual but I am not sure if legally, so I won't link to them here. While Chris Crawford used to distribute the "classic" Mac OS version of the game as freeware he has since removed the freeware downloads from his website.</comment></comment>


YouTube censoring comments that recommend PeerTube - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/degoogle/comments/dtvaur/proof_that_youtube_is_censoring_us_they_hide_the/ <comment><USER2> I understand the annoyance, but why _should_ Google allow someone to advertise a direct competitor to YouTube in the comments of a YouTube video? It's not a free speech platform: it's a platform for Google to sell advertisements mixed into user-generated content.</comment>